


Ripples on the water

by tofsla



Category: Saiyuki Gaiden
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-16
Updated: 2012-06-16
Packaged: 2017-11-07 21:03:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/435435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tofsla/pseuds/tofsla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A lot of perfect nights, and some imperfect ones.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ripples on the water

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2008 as part of the saltydogstories fic exchange @ lj

The night was very bright, with the light of the full moon falling across the gardens, picking out individual blades of grass in silver and throwing intensely dark pools of shadow beneath the trees. It rendered the world curiously colourless, and every time the wind lifted the branches of the cherry-trees into rustling life their silhouettes on the ground seemed to dance and whisper together.

Perfect temperature, perfectly clear; just enough air movement and just enough peace. It was a perfect night.

It always was.

Nothing ever changed.

 

He found Tenpou sitting by the window of his office, hunched over to stare more closely at the book he was reading. The silvery moonlight was all he had to see by; against the monochrome backdrop the tip of the ever-present cigarette between his lips glowed startlingly orange.

"Yanno," Kenren said, "some people would turn on a light."

Tenpou looked up at him, eyes unfocused. "Ah. You can if you like."

Kenren sat himself down on the windowsill, one leg on the ledge inside and one hanging down into air. "Late to be reading anyway."

"Is it?" He seemed to really look around for the first time, actually noticing something that wasn't Kenren or a book. "Oh."

Kenren didn't roll his eyes, but it was a near thing. "You eaten anything?"

"Today, you mean?"

"No. This week."

"Of course I have. On..."

"Shit, whatever. I don't wanna hear. At least you'll be a cheap drunk. Here."

They passed his flask back and forth for a while in peaceful silence, watching the rise and fall and sway of the tree branches and the scatters of blossom that fell twisting in the light breeze.

It was a perfect night.

 

Perfection might just be the most boring thing imaginable, Kenren decided, with the clarity born from the bottom of a sake-flask. It was another night, but how could he really tell? Perhaps all his life there'd only ever been one night, though it'd contained a thousand different women and one or two men. The texture of the darkness was always the same, and the texture of the light. The alcohol tasted the same, and gave the same hazy, swimming quality to the world.

He could try to be impulsive, but this was a world where impulse had no place at all.

He tried anyway. It worked pretty well, against the odds -- as though he'd needed to make himself less popular with the guys up above. But popularity wasn't the point.

The point was _life._

 

They sat on the bank of the lake together, staring out over the water, where the moon was mirrored. He liked to go fishing here during the day, catching fish and throwing them back, daydreaming on the banks or flat on his back in a boat, losing track of time. The fish were old friends by now; he'd probably caught every single one twice over, and some of them more. The huge pike with a broken spine half way down his back and a blotchy patch on his side was a favourite, either gullible or really damn desperate for company.

It was late, and they had to work tomorrow. This pattern never really changed either. Kenren was going to end up doing work for both of them, he figured, but that was okay.

Tenpou smoked cigarette after cigarette, maybe three or four to every one of Kenren's, and they both drank. That was how it went. Quiet companionship, and a level of familiarity which meant they didn't really need conversation most of the time, unless they felt like it.

"I wonder if change is possible here," Tenpou said thoughtfully, that night.

"Revolutionary talk," Kenren told him. "Throw that man out. Or clap him in irons. Or something."

Tenpou shook his head. "Sometimes I think something is changing after all."

"Yeah?"

"Maybe we just haven't looked in the right place yet."

"Maybe you read too many books."

The moon stared down at them, just the same as ever, as they laughed it off and settled down into silence again.

"In some parts of the world below," Tenpou said eventually, very seriously, "they say there is a man in the moon. In others, a rabbit. And then some people say the moon is a ball of rock that reflects light and is covered in holes from other rocks hitting it."

Kenren considered this carefully.

"How about a fish? In the moon."

"No, I don't think anyone believes that. Or if they do, I haven't found them."

"I think it should be a fish."

"Why?"

"I'm fond of fish."

Tenpou started to smile, and hid his mouth behind his hand on the pretext of lighting a new cigarette.

"Those people down below," Kenren said, after a while, "they change. Right? Their whole world changes, all the time. Wonder what that's like."

"I have a number of philosophical texts from highly thought of men in the world below," Tenpou offered. "If you think it would help. Most of them seem rather dissatisfied."

"Who isn't?"

Tenpou gave this serious thought, or seemed to. "Kanzeon Bosatsu."

"Shit. Have you drunk too much, or not enough?"

"I really couldn't say."

"You're still sitting up. I vote for not enough."

They never made it back to their rooms that night. Kenren woke up to the splashes of his friends, the fish, breaking the surface in a morning scramble for food, with dew soaking through his uniform and Tenpou's head lying heavy on his stomach, forming a single patch of warmth. It was really fucking uncomfortable, and therefore sort of bizarrely wonderful. Imperfection.

 

The ripples started a little while before that, probably, and when Kenren began to notice them he thought of Tenpou and that night by the lake, and he wondered if Tenpou knew something he didn't. Might be. Kenren was resolutely unpolitical, playing his own games to keep himself entertained, separate from the endless repetitive scheming and gossip of heaven. Sometimes they gossiped about him, true, but that was their damn problem.

At first he wasn't even sure if it was change in heaven or change down below, anyway. After all, one was infinitely more likely than the other.

But things did begin to change. Mostly it was Tenpou.

 

"D'you want to die?" Kenren asked him. It was just a question, matter-of-fact; he'd done the shouting earlier, during the day, while he was General Kenren criticizing the leadership of Marshal Tenpou.

Now they were just Kenren and Tenpou, and he was tired and sore and, okay, kinda worried, but mostly just trying to figure it out.

"Not particularly," Tenpou said. "I want to feel alive."

Kenren turned that over in his mind, trying to feel the real shape of it.

"I feel alive when I've got a drink, and maybe a woman."

Tenpou lit a cigarette. "Mm. I suppose I envy you that."

"Yeah?"

"Although if we are talking about simple pleasures, the first draw on a cigarette does very well."

Very well. Shit, five packs a day. He'd counted once, and then regretted it.

He took the cigarette from Tenpou after a while, and they smoked like that, passing back and forth. Smoke stung at the back of Kenren's throat.

"It ain't just a game," he said, handing the last couple of centimetres of cigarette back carefully. Ash spilled on the grass between them, getting lost, grey against grey.

"We are an army in a realm where killing is forbidden. What else is it?"

"People could die. Not just you. Find a better game."

The alcohol was coiling its way around his brain, beginning to make him clumsy; Tenpou too, maybe. When he reached for Kenren, his hand bumped roughly against Kenren's cheek, and then caught in his hair before it found its place at the back of his neck.

Kenren tried to remember to breathe.

Tenpou kissed him.

He couldn't see, but he knew that on the grass any distinction between their silhouettes would have been lost by now.

The moon watched.

 

Everything solidified and became real with the arrival of a little creature with huge golden eyes, full of colour in every sense. He made Kenren grin and Tenpou smile indulgently, and even Konzen seemed to soften. Things changed.

Kenren had no idea where this was going to end.

 

"Nothing is the same," Tenpou said. He sounded fascinated.

"Yeah," Kenren agreed. "Not a damn thing."

They lit the lamps and pulled the shutters closed across the windows against the moon, as though it might tell their secrets to someone, betray them.

"I am afraid of what might become of him, I think," Tenpou said.

"We'll look out for him."

Simple words, with a whole world of complications hiding behind them.

Tenpou fucked him for the first time that night. People had been talking for ages about the pair of them, so it wasn't like they had face to lose, even if they gave a shit. And they wanted to. And why the hell not.

Tenpou's mouth tasted of cigarettes and he smelled stale, old books and old tobacco and maybe even old clothes. Somehow it was just right, anyway; imperfect. Absolutely perfectly imperfect.

They rushed at first, and then took their time when they did it again later; warm hands over sweaty skin, exploring and claiming. Bodies pressed against each other, and, shit, the way that Tenpou's breath shifted when he pushed into Kenren was one of the hotter things Kenren had ever heard, but not so good as the sounds Tenpou made when he was really close to climax, pushing and pushing and pushing, looking for that moment.

Kenren could really get to like this. Way too much, probably.

The lamplight was warm and soft and the shadows they cast were pale, indistinct, thrown in all different directions by the multiple sources of light. Maybe it was a perfect night outside. He didn't give a fuck.

 

Tenpou lay carefully a little way away from him, not touching him, maybe for fear of hurting him -- which was pretty stupid, considering everything they'd just done, though, okay, his body wasn't impressed at the whole thing so soon after he'd been released. Maybe he should've actually taken it easy for once in his life, only... nah.

"You asked me before, some time ago," Tenpou said, all mild curiosity. "Do you want to die?"

He thought about it, lying tangled in damp sheets, hidden away from the rest of heaven for a while, feeling pretty good despite all the cuts and bruises and probably worse.

"Nah. Not really." He smirked for no-one's benefit, staring up at the ceiling. "Not before we get to see what happens next."

"Mm," Tenpou said. So that was that.

Change could come, however it wanted.


End file.
